KAREN:  Today is September 13th, 2005.  And this is Karen Brewster.  And here in Nome with Rita Buck who is visiting us from White Mountain.  Rita, thank you for coming in. 

RITA:  You're welcome.  It's good to be here.

KAREN:  This is from the Community Health Aide Jukebox. 
And so just to get us started a little bit, tell us a little bit about yourself, when and where you were born and kind of leading up to community health aides. 

RITA:  Okay.  All right.  I was born in Golovin in 1952 in my grandma's little one-room log cabin.  And when I was about two, or going on three -- three years old, my mother married Steven Agloinga, who was my stepfather, and we moved to White Mountain.  And I've been there ever since.  Went to grade school there and spent four years, high school in Unalakleet where I graduated in '71. 

Then it was in '73 of October when I -- I applied for a health aide relief, or back then they were called alternates.  And Willa Ashenfelter was the health aide then.  It was very exciting for me.  I had a job, you know.  Although it was back then, I was paid by the city which had the lease for the clinic. 

And I worked on weekends, but everything I learned, all the basic stuff was from Willa.  And those are things that I still practice today. 
You know, like she taught me how to do all the vital signs, like taking blood pressure, how to take a temperature.  We practiced giving shots on an orange. 

And it kind of came easy and they were fun for me because when my mother was a health aide before Willa, my mom used to take us with her to the school when she did her radio traffic. 

And those are fun and exciting times for me, too, growing up in the '60s.  Not really knowing what she was doing, but just being able to go with her up into the radio room where they had that sideband radio and listening to all the other health aides as they reported their -- their patients and the doctors respond.  And I said, I want to do that.  So that was kind of interesting. 

And it wasn't until late '70s, I think, where we started getting training, coming into Nome for basic EMS training, how, you know, bandage and package people when they get sick, like if they had to go to Nome. 
We didn't have medevac -- we did not have medevacs back then, if people were sick enough, we would have a plane wait up on the hill and then we would take them.  You know. 

KAREN:  So you would call for a plane to come? 

RITA:  Yeah. 

KAREN:  There weren't regular medevacs? 

RITA:  Yeah.  We had regular mail runs every other day or whatever.  The old Muns Airlines. 

And working as an alternate back then, I only worked on weekends and on holidays, and Willa, she was the primary then, when she was available to go to work.  You know, holidays or when she had to come to training.  And if we had a trainer to White Mountain to, you know, supervise, I'd come to work then. 

And those are fun times, too, because one of my favorite old teachers was Dan Thomas.  And he was very to the point and a very good teacher.  He was very direct.  Strict in some ways, but that's how we learn, you know.  And some things today, I still have those in the back of my mind, you know, of about what he told us.